AMSAT Special Bulletin 28 Dec 2000

AMSAT-DL Vice President Peter Guelzow, DB2OS, has provided ANS
with a summary of recent command team actions regarding AO-40:

The recovery efforts of AO-40 continue, mainly centered around
housekeeping tasks designed to improve and stabilize the systems
onboard the satellite. In addition, new software routines were
successfully loaded that restored all Battery Charge Regulator
functions and have resulted in a positive power budget with happy
batteries. The command team is also pleased to report that the AO-40
Flight Software is now completely re-loaded (with the exception of
D-block programming and WOD routines which will be done later).

Command station G3RUH (James Miller) reported that commanding
AO-40 on L-band frequencies was fairly easy, thus it appears the
L-band receiver seems to be work nominally.

A quick look at received telemetry instrumentation shows Helium
pressure at essentially where it was following the first 400-N motor
burn. Also, it appears that a few temperature and current sensors
either failed and/or are showing incorrect values. The onboard sun
sensors appear to be fine and are showing a solar angle that is
near our predictions. The received spin rate telemetry is not
accurate when compared to the actual spin as measured by the
doppler wobbling of the S-band beacon. There appears to be a
substantial spin increase. Clearly, more time is needed to analyze
and understand what has happened here.

The good news is that the spacecraft is now fully under control.
During the next several days additional software will be loaded
and the various uplinks will be verified before a command is sent
to turn on the 2-meter again.

Stay tuned to ANS for additional bulletins from AMSAT, the
official source for information on AMSAT OSCAR-40.

[ANS thanks AMSAT-DL Vice President Peter Guelzow, DB2OS,
for this information]